Radio Content Poll #2

[VegaNova]

Hello (again)!

I think I mentioned it earlier, but our SP.com audio archive has some pretty wide gaps in it. Other parts are pretty darn complete as far as containing every little bit of music that currently exists among the fan community. But over time we're hoping to get our archive / playlist as comprehensive as possible.

So for this poll we're asking for what you want to hear in the future - the list above points out some of the biggest opportunities we have in completing our playlist.

Granted, we eventually want to complete everything anyway, but it takes a long time to accomplish this. My goal is that the votes in this poll will help us decide where to begin!

Also any suggestions are more than welcome!

[little junior2]

i picked 90s cec music because i was born in 1999 and i never heard their early voices.Right now they are playing new chuckecheese, and classic ptt music.

[Vega III CEC]

I feel that there's a whole bunch of the PTT stuff, but not any modern CEC hits that are really memorable. I mean sure there's a butt-load of B-Day songs, but I'm kinda wanting to see more stuff like "Chuck E", "Larger Than Life", "Turn the Beat Around", "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You", and a few more random plays of "Disco Inferno/Stand By Me" *hinthint*

If any of that content could be added into the list, that'd be amazing.

[menutia]

All of the above.

[Rizzy]

I think, given the fact that it is an online "radio broadcast", we all enjoy pretty much everything from just about every "era" (well, okay, for me MINUS the current CEC stuff)...why not just throw a variety in there of "enough" material from every group, era, etc. Makes the most sense to me.

[RAFE CEC Guy]

Just one thing, NEVER play Pepperoni from Pasqually AGAIN!!! It will drive me completely insane.

[NickRyder]

Okay this may be a bit of a weird thought... but the showtapes you're playing, would it be possible do like a "bumper" between the different tapes? Something along the lines of "And this is some Vintage Pizza Time Theatre from 1979... the "Cowboy" showtape with Dolli Dimples and Harmony Howelette." Just a thought.

I love this channel, I tune into it at least once a day. I have to admit, the RAE song covers are pretty good, I think I like some of the RAE versions almost better than some of the originals to be honest. The RAE is more listenable as background music, a bit less talking between songs compared to PTT/CEC.

For those of ya'll in Milwaukee, you might be familiar with 95.7 WKLH's Steve Palec and his "Rock n Roll Roots" radio show/block. Where he kinda takes a general theme, say... songs about time. Gives some behind the scenes stories on the songs, maybe interviews, other interesting tidbits. Be neat to see something similar to that with the showtapes you're playing. Be interesting to see how similar some of the shows were between the technically 3 shows - since I consider PTT and CEC different animals. Maybe even a little background on the songs and the choices from people like Aaron Fechter and whoever did the showtapes for PTT/CEC.

[Rizzy]

That may be a hassle though when it comes to getting it to work with the program streaming the audio. Most software I've seen that does this very thing is usually set for "randomize" or "shuffle", so it would be difficult, I think to have a bumper or verbal intro cut that would match the upcoming tune.

Maybe I'm wrong. All I know is last night I listened quite a bit after we got home from the Safehouse...and maybe it was the beer in me - but that's when I realized just how much I can't stand Chuck's voice! LOL

[VegaNova]

Well complete showtapes are definetely do-able, but with the service we're using it's far easier to try playing them at scheduled times (as Rizzy mentioned, the shuffle function definetely messes up trying to play a particular setlist). It's funny the showtape "announcement" thing was brought up... I dug up some that Brian had recorded years ago that we never got around to using. We're hoping to start playing those as part of next month's little "theme".

One beautiful function included in the service we're using is the ability to add different "weights" to playlists. For instance we have everything divided up into their respective genres (cabaret, RAE, voice artist, CEC, etc). They all still shuffle through the tracks, but certain catagories get played more often than others. Like PTT/RAE/CEC has a weight of maybe 3, cabaret has 2, and voice artists / misc has 1. Then I have a "heavy" playlist of mixed audio that's weighted to maybe like 5. It plays sequentially, and is sorted so you hear a decent mix of some of the "better" audio from all genres (ha ha, more like my personal favorites from PTT/RAE/CEC).

Granted, I still find that the automated shuffle gets stuck playing 3 or 4 tracks from the same genre back to back. It was much worse before I implemented the "heavy" mix. I remember in the testing phases, hearing maybe like an hour worth of solid PTT stuff. LOL

Just an FYI for those curious, we currently have 3GB worth of webspace (which is darn near maxed out with the current content). So from this point on we'll have to start swapping out audio when adding new stuff. The good news is that we can overide the server anytime with a live broadcast which will give us the chance to play an even wider selection. Our current breakdown of tracks is:

RAE - 251
CEC - 66
PTT - 176
CABARET - 58
MISC - 191

The numbers look pretty lop-sided when you see the actual figures, but the playlist control has helped to mix things up pretty well. Like I said though, we definetely have major gaps at the moment!

Also I wanted to thank everyone for their input thus far - I think some great ideas have been mentioned and there's a few in particular that I'd like to work on getting accomplished. :D

[CEC Kid Check]

Okay this may be a bit of a weird thought... but the showtapes you're playing, would it be possible do like a "bumper" between the different tapes? Something along the lines of "And this is some Vintage Pizza Time Theatre from 1979... the "Cowboy" showtape with Dolli Dimples and Harmony Howelette." Just a thought.


This is definantly possible even with shuffle on. But:
RAE - 251
CEC - 66
PTT - 176
CABARET - 58
MISC - 191
---------------
742 songs (Not including the ones we have no included in that playlist)

I think Brian will hang himself if he had to record 750+ individual bumpers...so I don't see this happening. :))

[NickRyder]

LOL yeah that's A LOT of tracks... well would it be possible for the player to display a "now playing..." track title? I use Windows Media Player to listen to RS, but all that shows up is the showbizpizza.com site and "now playing... Radio Showbiz"

[VegaNova]

Yeah I noticed that windows media player does that. If you use winamp I know it includes the full id3 tag information, as does the player embedded on the RS homepage. I'm not sure how the other players handle it.

The one thing I'm dissapointed with is none of the players I've tested display the album (showtape) titles. This would be a huge help to everyone, as they could use the showtape review as a quick reference guide to better understand what they're hearing and put it into context if they wanted to learn more about it. But since the showtape info is disregarded it complicates that.

My plan was to sooner or later present a list of what's contained in our archive so folks could request tracks from what's currently available. But that may still be a ways off.

The announcements I was referring to however were showtape announcements. So like for scheduled broadcasts you'd hear a little intro telling what the tape is, the year, and any relevant info. Those are very do-able. :)

[NickRyder]

:) Cool
I just tried it on my old iMac DV using iTunes and it seems to work pretty well with it, at least I get track titles. First time I've tried it on the Mac. Even on my mom's sub 1mbps service at the office it comes through great!

Not that I'm not in love with ShoutCast, but are there any other providers you can use too? Or is this the best of the best? Just curious, was kind of thinking of using a similar service for my mom so she could broadcast a regular health talk show.

One thing I've noticed the more I listen, the level of quality even the old PTT and RAE stuff had.

[Harmony Howlette]

My plan was to sooner or later present a list of what's contained in our archive so folks could request tracks from what's currently available. But that may still be a ways off.

I have an application that makes that VERY easy if you don't already have it...let me know!

[VegaNova]

Thanks to everyone who's voted! I think there's definetely some places we can improve our offerings right away.

And Harmony - I might just take you up on that offer for that program. I have a list written out of what we already have, and I also have some HTML code that let's people email in requests. The biggest problem is that I didn't want to post the request form and have people start asking for stuff we don't have access to just yet ;)

So if there was a way to tie it all together that would be wonderful.

[Harmony Howlette]

Thanks to everyone who's voted! I think there's definetely some places we can improve our offerings right away.

And Harmony - I might just take you up on that offer for that program. I have a list written out of what we already have, and I also have some HTML code that let's people email in requests. The biggest problem is that I didn't want to post the request form and have people start asking for stuff we don't have access to just yet ;)

So if there was a way to tie it all together that would be wonderful.
Well, I'll shoot you an email with the program...hope it helps!

[CalvinandCEC]

Just don't play the RAE Showtapes with the Showbiz Voices. There annoying and it make Looney Bird sound like a girl.

[Beach Bear]

I feel that there's a whole bunch of the PTT stuff, but not any modern CEC hits that are really memorable. I mean sure there's a butt-load of B-Day songs, but I'm kinda wanting to see more stuff like "Chuck E", "Larger Than Life", "Turn the Beat Around", "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You", and a few more random plays of "Disco Inferno/Stand By Me" *hinthint*

If any of that content could be added into the list, that'd be amazing.

I know! I have been waiting for "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You" and "Chuck E (Parody of Crazy by Britney Spears)"... Those are the two that are missing from my CEC music collection and I want to at least hear them.

[bigdaddyrico85]

:)
Not that I'm not in love with ShoutCast, but are there any other providers you can use too? Or is this the best of the best? Just curious, was kind of thinking of using a similar service for my mom so she could broadcast a regular health talk show.

.

I use the VLC media player. Works great. Shows all the tags and everything. Even plays dvds from other countries without changing the egion code on the dvd plaer.